Flip this lesson! (a TED-Ed update)

I talked about the launch of TED-Ed back in March. The project, designed to inspire high school students with mind-altering video lessons presented by master teachers and amplified by talented artists, has grown way more collaborative and even more powerful for learning.

The second phase of the initiative allows registered teachers to create and share lessons around the videos, allowing teachers to better flip the content, and to share the customized instructional materials they create.

TED’s new website also lets educators create lessons from scratch using any TED-Ed video that allows third-party embedding (most of them) and distribute them to a wider audience, with the best of those new videos being featured on TED-Ed. The goal of this is to make “flip teaching” — in which teachers assign homework on video, something that’s difficult for most teachers to do — much easier.

This “flip this lesson” button allows you to turn a video into learning activities that can be assigned to students or shared more widely. You can add context, questions, quizzes, and follow-up suggestions to dig deeper and you can monitor student progress.(The software platform allows you to create instruction around any YouTube video, not just those created for TED-Ed.)

A teacher who creates content automatically renders a new, private web page, which the teacher can then distribute and use to track students’ progress on the assignment. You can share the lesson with students and others via e-mail, Facebook, or Twitter. It will exist on its own unique page on TED-Ed, and you can decide who gets to see that page.

The number of Flips grew steadily as I wrote this post and is, at this moment, 547. Some videos offer multiple Flips.

This is a wonderful opportunity for teachers, and teacher librarians, to create relevant critical thinking challenges around already creative content, to differentiate instruction to meet local needs, to globally share our best.

Currently in beta, TED-Ed plans to add new features and content in the coming months and expects to launch formally in September.

About NeverEnding Search

News, thoughts, and discoveries at the vortex of libraries, literacy, learning, discovery and play. Joyce is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information, an edtech Sherpa, and a connector. Her interests include: social media curation, digital/media fluency, transliteracy and youth, online communities of practice, digital storytelling and creativity, youth information-seeking behavior, social networking, online learning, and the evolving role and powers of the teacher-librarian.